Bulgaria gets seven bids for studies for potential Rila motorway

The bidders are local companies Infraproject Consult, Logistika 21, Set Engineering, Strol-1000 and Via-Plan, the Institute for Transportation Engineering and the Research Consultancy and Design Centre of the University of Architecture, Civil Engineering and Geodesy, according to tender documents published on the tender register's website on Friday.

The 89.6 km section of the Rila motorway, which will connect Gueshevo, on the border with North Macedonia, to Bulgaria's three other motorways, will enhance pan-European transport corridors IV and VIII, RIA said in a tender notice published last week.

The pan-European Corridor IV runs from Dresden to Istanbul via Budapest, Romania's Craiova, and a section of the Trakia motorway connecting Sofia and Plovdiv. Corridor VIII is an east-west route connecting Albania's Adriatic port of Durres to the Bulgarian Black Sea port of Varna via North Macedonia.

The technical consultation tender is worth 300,000 levs ($168,014/153,387 euro). The motorway section will include four tunnels and nine road junctions. It will create an alternative access to the spa resorts of Sapareva Banya and Belchinski Bani near the southwestern town of Dupnitsa and the ski resort of Borovets.

In September, Via-Plan was awarded a 1.96 million levs contract for the conceptual and technical design of 62 kilometres of motorway linking Dupnitsa to Gyueshevo on the border with North Macedonia.

(1 euro = 1.95583 levs)